Like the Gmail and Facebook apps, YouTube uses a sidebar navigation approach: You swipe from left to right to push the apps main content over and expose the sidebar.

From there, you can log in to your account or access a variety of other options, including predefined categories that YouTube provides, such as Music, Sports, Gaming, Education, and more. Youll also see a list of your channel subscriptions; a button lets you add other channels, which (if youre logged in) YouTube will happily suggest to you based on your viewing history. Tapping on any category or channel will take you to a listing of videos associated with that topic.

By default, the new YouTube app presents a scrolling list of recommended videos. If youre logged in, they're recommended based on your subscriptions, likes, and history on YouTube. Logged in users can also choose (in the Settings section) to limit that home feed to only show new videos from your subscriptions.

Tap on a video; its page will load, and the video therein starts playing automatically. In portrait mode, the video is embedded on a screen with other information about it, including its title, uploader (to whose feed you can subscribe, if you choose), and description. Youll also see options for viewing related videos and reading comments attached to the video (or adding your own).

Rotate the phone to landscape mode, and the video automatically goes full-screen on your device. If you tap on the video in landscape, you expose options to rate it (thumbs up or down), share it, or add it to your YouTube Watch Later, Favorites, or Playlist lists; you can also flag it for review if it contains objectionable content. You can also enable closed captioning on videos (where available), and theres support for AirPlay built in as well. Of course, scrubbing through the timeline is also supported if you want to jump around in the video, but since the app doesnt use Apples built-in video player, you dont get the option of variable scrubbing speeds as you do in, say, the Videos app.

Unsurprisingly, one focus of the new YouTube app is search. Youll find a search button at the top of pretty much every page: Upon tapping it, you can type in search terms as usual, but Googles also integrated the voice search capability it first rolled out in its Google Search app. Tap the microphone to the right of the text field and speak your search terms; the app will interpret them and immediately take you to a list of results that match.